The smart fellows over at Touch Arcade keep a close eye on the Apple’s New Zealand App Store this time of week because the time difference gives a sneak peek at big new game releases that drop every Thursday. Among today’s releases: Atari’s Greatest Hits, an iPhone and iPad app that packs 100 arcade and Atari 2600 games.

Games in the app are divided into 25 packs of five games each, and each pack sells for $0.99 through in-app purchases (the app itself is free and includes Pong). Or you can opt to snag all 100 games for $14.99, which is a pretty good deal, considering. The rest of the titles comprise 18 classic arcade titles and 92 Atari 2600 games.

Most of the games are unchanged from their old-school versions, but several have been amped up to include Bluetooth multiplayer with other players.

Things start out pretty slow with iRequiem, and at first the iPhone game seems like it might not be very fun. A side-scroller set on a stationary background, you’re basically just hacking away at several different kinds of enemies. But as iRequiem goes on, the enemies become more varied and difficult and you can gather more weapons and abilities, taking what could have been a pretty boring title and making it a strategic and addictive hack-and-slash experience.

You’re battling your way through hell in order to reclaim your soul, but “through” isn’t really the word for it. There are 50 levels in the campaign mode, spread across five locations, but they’re all actually the same place with a slightly different look. Each level contains a church and a shop: the former is a place where you can activate special magic spells, the latter is your safe zone in between levels. Both are always in the same places, and you can move back and forth on the stage.

Each level’s goal is survival. You’ll hack through something like 23 total different kinds of enemies, each with their own strengths, weaknesses and combat patterns. A timer runs down during each level, and when it depletes completely, you get to head back to the shop to purchase new weapons and abilities. The money to pay for said items is procured from gold drops and treasure chests that show up as you do your killing.

Once you’re able to start buying new weapons and items, things pick up. You start with a pair of claws as your melee weapon and a slow-firing bow, but you can upgrade to better items for both. The ranged weapons each have several upgrades, as well as different available kinds you can switch to on the fly — a shotgun is one of the first, but you’ll wind up with a fully upgraded rocket launcher in your repertoire by the third or fourth areas. You can also buy spells that use up magic power (replenished by item drops), amulets that give you passive abilities, and health items between stages.

The depth of combat items and customization is what saves iRequiem. The game is pretty thin, though it can be addictive — each level sees new enemies or different combinations of old ones, forcing you to change up your strategies and weapons to deal with them effectively. You’ll also be playing against your ammo counter — 400 shotgun shells won’t last long if you make it your primary weapon, for example, but a heavy reliance on ranged weapons has a trade off of leaving you less vulnerable to attack. Deciding which weapons to use based on ammo, range, effectiveness and enemy type keeps the potentially repetitive combat fresh.

You also get access to different chargeable abilities, which breaks up the action even further. As you kill enemies, their bodies dissolve and leave behind souls that you can collect to fire a big spell from the church. These spells are available to you as soon as you learn how to use them, while other abilities and spells have to be earned or purchased. They all have different effects, like restoring your health and magic or making you invisible to enemies, and last for a limited time. Depending on what you need, the church spells can tip the balance in a level, or give you the boost you need to reach the end of the timer.

Dealing and taking damage also charges your adrenaline meter, which eventually gives you access to an ability called your Dark Power. Like the church spells, these last for a limited time but can seriously help you — while spells cast from soul power tend to be defensive or at least related to your character, Dark Power spells are generally offensive and super-powered. They can even help you best a boss that might otherwise kill you, so saving up adrenaline and accessing Dark Powers at the right time is crucial to success.

There are a few other elements, as well. You have access to limited use magic you can doll out any time, there are often explosive barrels spread around the map at intervals that you can tap to ravage enemies, and every so often you’ll get access to a vehicle that makes you invincible and thrashes enemies for a short amount of time. No one element in iRequiem is anything to scream about, but taken together, they make for an easy to play but still deep and engrossing combat experience.

Graphically, the game isn’t bad, but don’t expect iRequiem to wow you as far as its capabilities. There are some cool-looking enemies mixed in, and the game is generally pretty bloody as you hack through demons, but it’s fairly cartoonish in its style. This isn’t a game whose gore is going to turn your stomach, as some people have made it out to be, but if you’re not a fan of digital monster guts, you might want to look away.

As far as style is concerned, it’s difficult to tell if iRequiem’s little elements like its main character’s one liners are intentionally campy or just totally out of touch. He spouts lines like “born to be wild,” which is…well, goofy. He’s sort of a low-rent, demonic Duke Nukem, but certainly less funny and weirder. The bad translation of some of the text dialogue makes the lines even more questionable.

That’s a minor complaint, though — the awkwardness of the hopefully intentional camp doesn’t really distract from the actual gameplay. And overall, iRequiem is a decent iPhone game: addictive, easy to play and pretty fun. It’s not going to take the App Store by storm or anything, but iRequiem is a worthy download at $1.99.

Pros:

Deep combat system that develops through unlocking different items

Various kinds of magic spells and abilities to break up the melee and ranged combat, plus occasional vehicles

Fair amount of challenge, especially with bosses and minibosses

Tons of levels and enemies to play through, but all are small enough for short play periods

Marvel Pinball, the newest set of downloadable tables for Pinball FX2, will make Marvel fans wish someone was still making pinball machines. For the most part, it wraps in the cool aspects of the license with some great classic pinball action.

The download will run you 800 Microsoft Points on Xbox LIVE or $9.99 on the Playstation Network, and that price might be a little steep for players who aren’t super-fans of either pinball or Marvel Comics. Yes, that is a comparable rate for Pinball FX tables — they run at 200 MS points or $2.49, and this update comes with four tables, so it works out to the same rate — but dropping $10 or its equivalent on new pinball add-ons could scare away players who aren’t die-hard.

Not that there isn’t a fair amount of value for your purchase. Each of the tables is skillfully designed, with lots of different challenges to take part in. Each has a unique look and theme, with different franchise-specific aspects: on the Spider-Man table, you’ll be bouncing exploding pumpkins around, while the Blade table switches between day mode, in which you hit ramps to power Blade up, and night mode, when you’ll be shooting at different targets to take down vampires.

The controls for Pinball FX2 are pretty standard, with nothing new showing up with these new tables: the trigger buttons control the flippers, the left analog stick can be used to tilt the table to save your ball once in a while, a face button selects things when you need it and another changes your view of the game surface. All of the Marvel tables come with lots of available views, but none of them is an improvement over the standard stationary, full-table shot as if you were standing in front of it. The other viewpoints tend to be closer to the action, with more camera motion, and I generally found it harder to play without being able to see everything and plan accordingly.

As with other Pinball FX2 tables, the graphics here are stellar. Each has the look and tactile feel of a real arcade machine, and comes complete with the level of challenge one would expect from really playing on one. In fact, all four Marvel tables are more or less awesome, and it’s a shame they only exist on your TV screen.

The four tables in the pack represent a different Marvel hero: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Blade and Wolverine. Each is designed to be specific to the character, with bits of voice work recorded for when you lose a ball or nail a challenge on each table. Tony Stark has lots to brag about when it comes to Stark Industries as you rack up points on the Iron Man table, while Spider-Man trades snarky comments with Green Goblin, Doc Ock and Mysterio. Not all of the writing for the lines is amazing — this is a pinball game, after all — but for the most part the voice work is a nice touch that conveys a little more sense of the attention Zen Studios paid to the license. But the lines can also get a little repetitive, and you’ll quickly come to loathe a computer voice decrying “Ball lost!” every single time you screw up on the Wolverine stage, but it’s nothing to really fuss over. For the most part, the audio adds to the experience, rather than subtracts.

Like the rest of Pinball FX, Marvel Pinball gets addicting in a hurry. The game is already filled with trackers for your score and achievements to keep you trying to one-up yourself and your friends, and the added bonus of clearing different “stages” on each table — taking down Green Goblin by shooting his exploding pumpkins up his designated ramp, for example, or taking on two villains at once with a flood of pumpkin bombs at the same time — adds another level to the strategy and value of continuing play. You’ll not only be chasing down a better score, you’ll be wanting to increase your skill to beat different aspects of each new table.

While you’re forced to pay the full 800 or $9.99 to get any one of the tables, the pack makes up for purchasing all four by making them converse with each other through challenges. Beating certain challenges on one table opens up a new one on another, which will help get you playing all of them regularly, if pounding your score up to new heights isn’t incentive enough (and it is). That’s a nice bit of added value that makes the price tag sting a little less.

All the tables are well-designed and balanced, too, except for the Wolverine table, which I found to make my ball drop at a higher rate than the others. It felt like that table specifically was designed with a lot of cheap kills, and while the other boards have lots of different ramps and challenges to hit, the Wolverine table seems to have fewer things to shoot, while sending your ball straight down the kill tube way more often.

Meanwhile, the Blade table is the most fun, with smaller challenges that are simpler and therefore more rewarding to complete. One spot has you buying weapons for Blade, another has you kicking through images of suspects while a timer runs out, trying to pick out the vampire from memory.

But every table has actions that need to be completed in sequence before you can access new aspects, giving the pinball action another way of drawing players in — the need to finish each table. For example, if you complete the tasks to defeat Mandarin and Whiplash on the Iron Man table, you’ll get to face off against Ultimo.

Put simply: there’s lots to do.

So is Marvel Pinball worth 800 MS points or $10 straight off your credit card? For Pinball FX2 fans, absolutely — added bonus if you dig Marvel heroes, as well. Not all the tables are created equal, but they do all offer some tough challenge and addictive score-chasing gameplay. And the Marvel license makes these levels feel like the pinball tables you remember from the arcade when you were a kid.

Pros:

Beautifully rendered, Marvel themed levels

Great, challenging table design that works well with each specific character

Cross-table challenges to get you playing on all four stages

All the benefits of Pinball Fx2, including in-game score-tracking for your own records, plus friends’ scores

Cons:

Extra view options aren’t too useful

Wolverine table design isn’t quite as sharp as the others

800 MS Point/$9.99 PSN price point is a little high for non-Marvel fanboys